Reduce D to Extend C Drive in 5 Simple Steps

C drive is nearly full while D drive has more than 100GB free space, so I planned to shrink D to enlarge C. Nevertheless, I have reduced D drive but still can’t extend C in Windows 10 Disk Management. Why? Is there any solution?

This is a quite commonly seen issue among Windows users, and most of them still haven’t found a good solution.

Luckily, in this post, we will explain why Windows Disk Management doesn’t allow users to enlarge C drive after shrinking D as well as show how to fix the issue.

Step 4: Select D drive to take free space from the drop-down menu of “Take Free Space from” option and drag sliding handle to decide how much free space to take. Then, click “OK” to return to the main window.

Step 5: Click “Apply” button to make all the changes performed.

Now, your C drive has been enlarged by taking free space from drive D, and next, let’s see what cause this issue in Disk Management.

Why Reduced D Drive But Can’t Extend C in Windows Disk Management?

It’s largely because space got from D drive is not right contiguous to drive C.

Users who are quite familiar with Windows Disk Management utility know “Shrink Volume” feature can only create an unallocated or free space after its source partition, and the very space can only be used to create a new drive or extend the source partition itself.

However, the “Extend Volume” feature is available only when there is contiguous unallocated or free space on the right side.